This paper examines liberalization of the basic
telecommunications sector in a number of Asian countries and the role of the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in this process. It begins by explaining the working
of the GATS as a mechanism for multilateral liberalization efforts. It then presents a
description of the reforms taking place in the telecom regimes of selected Asian
countries, and of the commitments these countries made in the recent GATS negotiations.
The paper explores the reasons why governments have taken advantage of the GATS
negotiations to make multilateral market-opening commitments, even though they were not
pursuing export interests. The paper also considers the limits to what was achieved by way
of liberalization commitments in the negotiations. Allowing greater foreign equity
participation without liberalizing the conditions of entry may raise national welfare
concerns. Furthermore, certain governments could have taken greater advantage of the
opportunity under GATS to precommit to future liberalization.